Well done... before you take that big step and try building your rc controller, how about expanding your blinky program to flash 8 LEDs in patterns, such as a chase pattern with each LED turning on in turn... and then add a 10k pot to control the speed.

I'm still very much a beginner in programming, but have managed to build several interesting projects with the help of these guys here. What tends to get positive responses are where you have tried to write your code and need help de-bugging it.

You'll also find coding is quite addictive... and you are often thinking how a PIC would be the ideal solution to various projects