That's some great advice right there. You're doing one of the most important things and that's having a side project. Something you want to see finished and you can keep learning on. This is a big motivation boost.

You should definitely blog about your progress learning to code. Especially document what you've learned every day you sat down to code. I think that's one of the best ways to motivate yourself, as it show's what your progress has been. This comes in helpful when you're in doubt if you really made any progress in the last days/weeks and trust me, you will be in doubt every now and then. But then you just go back to your public journal so to speak and remind yourself that there have been lots of things you learned.

Anyhoo, keep at it!