ruby on Debian error when working with Sinatra said undefined method `get' for main:Object (NoMethodError)

Banged my Head against this for half the afternoon, debugged to the fact that using ruby1.9 you MUST install the gem1.9. using gem defaults to 1.8 when you install ruby...
# aptitude install rubygems1.9
# gem1.9 install sinatra
etc etc

When calling ruby state the version you want:
# ruby1.9 ./sinatra.rb


Remember that the gem libraries are in separate paths... on my system this is /usr/lib/ruby/gems/
for getting gems to update behind an NTLM proxy server remember to set your environment:

export http_proxy=http://username:password@hostname-of-proxy:8080

in `': undefined method `get' for main:Object (NoMethodError)
from ./sinatra.rb:1:in `require'
from ./sinatra.rb:1:in `