Learning español the hard way

I've decided to learn spanish on my own! I did so with english several years ago. I started by sitting down for one month 8 hours a day with 1500 pages of text to translate from english to my native french with the help of a BIG English to French dictionary. Born and raised in Québec city I decided I had enough of that job I could have kept forever (but lasted two years) and at age 19 left for some little adventure out west Not very original but worth the try nonetheless. I didn't necessarily feel like going abroad and settle for a great city some 3000 miles from home. I name Vancouver.
I arrived there with my high school esl and beyond sitting down and translating I could quickly make real good friends, for I guess I was cool enough to make people comfortable in my surrounding even though my english was pretty basic and maybe horrible .
After I finished this big task of translation, I wrote an article about one of the subject matter I dealt with: Agriculture and feeding the world. Mind you, it wasn't published but it was a good start for me.
Nowadays, the challenge is either less or more. Depends... I've decided to do it just about the same way: sitting down, this time learning the tricky spanish grammar first, then reading and translating AND listening to spanish radios, such as BBC Mundo, Radio Nacional de España and UNAM, Radio Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. I will eventually also get in touch with Hispanophones or spanish speaking people when I feel comfortable enough to discuss in spanish.
The radio is an amazingly quick way to grab the sense of the language. Of course it will not replace real conversation but it will serve as a good jumpboard.