Setting up s3, paperclip and ckeditor with a s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com type domain. From here all uploads via ckeditor or a paperclip manage file just worked. Also cap deploy so this symlink is in place

deploy.rb

# this post helped here
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/705054/where-do-you-put-your-app-config-files-when-deploying-rails-with-capistrano-and
# get your file to the server under shared
# then update cap to handle the symlink update

namespace :deploy do
  task :start do ; end
  task :stop do ; end
  # this task
  task :symlink_shared do
    run "ln -s #{shared_path}/s3.yml #{release_path}/config/"
  end
  task :restart, :roles => :app, :except => { :no_release => true } do
    run "#{try_sudo} touch #{File.join(current_path,'tmp','restart.txt')}"
  end
end

# this line triggers it
before "deploy:restart", "deploy:symlink_shared"

picture.rb

# app/models/ckeditor comes with a model as well
# also the file attachment_files.rb
# as above just make sure you did not code in here a url or path

class Ckeditor::AttachmentFile < Ckeditor::Asset
  has_attached_file :data,
                    :path => ":rails_root/public/ckeditor_assets/pictures/:id/:style_:basename.:extension",

production.rb

# same with development.rb
# environment/production.rb


config.paperclip_defaults = {
    :storage => :s3,
    :url => ':s3_alias_url',
    :path => "/:class/:id/:style/:clean_filename",
    :s3_host_alias => 's3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/nutilesblog',
    :s3_credentials => "#{Rails.root}/config/s3.yml"
}

project.rb

# app/models/project.rb
# make sure you are not overriding paths or url settings here

  has_attached_file :photo,
    	:path => ":rails_root/public/system/:attachment/:id/:style/:filename",
	  	:styles => {
	  		:thumb => "100x100",
	  		:medium => "200x200",
	  		:large => "600x400"
	}

s3.yml

# this helped to hide the secret settings from git
# but at the same time not set them in the envirnment variables of the shell.
# config/s3.yml

development: &DEFAULTS
  bucket: nutilesblog
  access_key_id: 'access key'
  secret_access_key: 'secret key'

test:
  <<: *DEFAULTS
  bucket: nutilesblog

production:
  <<: *DEFAULTS
  bucket: nutilesblog

staging:
  <<: *DEFAULTS
  bucket: nutilesblog