Good luck to you man. I've been working seriously on my programming as well. Rewriting old projects is a good way to see how far you've come. You should read Forum_account's tutorials if you haven't already.

If I can suggest, you should develop a mini-game of a theme that appeals to you, by way of learning the language. However when you get a game 'feature' done or get especially stuck, post a blog post about it, with the source code included (probably just a snippet in the blog, as it's a mini-game so you don't need to be writing too much code).

I figure you are the kind of guy that'll ignore the dumb comments, and you'll see that you'll get some good code feedback (maybe alternative code snippet examples) from faces you've recognised as being good with code in the past. Ask questions on those, ask for diagrams if you think visually, whatever.

That process I think will teach you programming a LOT better than just reading tutorials and trying them out in private. The tutorials are an explanation of how to get a job done usually, they don't teach you what the experienced guys have learned by their 100's of hours of project work.

Talking through a feature with them and seeing their concerns, their priorities etc will do.