Congrats! I really like PHP, and have been using it for years, so I think you've made a good choice about what language to start learning. If you haven't seen before, there are a few skilled PHP programmers on this board, so don't be afraid to ask questions.
If you are learning PHP, it might not be a bad idea to lear smarty as well so you can do something like the following to output the same as you have above. (well actually it starts at 1 instead of 0, but that wouldn't be hard to fix)
Code:
<table border="1">
{section name=row loop=4}
<tr>
{section name=col loop=3}
<td>Row = {$smarty.section.row.iteration}<br />
Col = {$smarty.section.col.iteration}</td>
{/section}
</tr>
{/section}
</table>