FWIW, aesthetics matter. Yeah, you can force yourself overlook them, and I did so when I was taking a look at the site, but it's natural (and probably reasonable) to use aesthetics as a quick heuristic to determine quality. Most people don't have the time or energy to evaluate all the possible factors that determine something's quality, so we use "irrational" methods of rapidly gauging whether something is worth our time and attention. An abrasively designed website is like a dirty grocery store; just like it's hard to find the clean piece of fruit when bugs are circling your head, it's hard to evaluate an application's merits when the color scheme is buzzing in your mind.
Now, that being said, it's not helpful just to scream "UGLY" and move on whenever something doesn't project the disaffected techno-chic image that glossy buttons and minimalistic icons could give it (heh heh heh). But it isn't too much to ask the colors to not be actually painful to the eyes. That much has been fixed now anyways.
I, for one, am interested to see where this project goes. Good tutorial software and formats are important, and I think the effort is commendable. I wish I could offer more feedback, but I haven't had time to listen much of the content on the site. And that may be a problem common to many of the posters here: audio-based tutorials are a time commitment, and when you're asking for that, all the little things like design start to matter even more. I've decided that I'm interested and that I will take the time later to look at it and give more thorough feedback precisely because Paddy (the OP) seems like a genuinely nice guy, and he's controlled enough not to take the color criticism too harshly.
Most people don't have the time or energy to evaluate all the possible factors that determine something's quality, so we use "irrational" methods of rapidly gauging whether something is worth our time and attention.
That's great. If you aren't actually going to look at something in detail, you don't need to post a comment. Also, if seven other people have already posted the same comment, you can probably also not post.
(If you don't have the time to evaluate something in detail, you also don't have time to post a comment claiming you evaluated something in detail.)
I don't think I made my point clear enough that it is in fact the little things that often influence whether or not we commit resources to a particular activity. You're right to suggest that just reposting the same comments about it being ugly is not useful, but some of the posters (including myself) tried to help.
The reason I posted a comment in detail is because I'm interested in evaluating and discussing human behavior.
Oh and you kinda seemed like your were riding on the high horse of holy practicality, and I just wanted to ruffle that up a bit. Whatever it takes to keep the discussion interesting, ya know?
http://github.com/paddymul/rxvt-js
http://github.com/paddymul/TerminalcastRecord