It's nostalgic, but good lord does it need a bit of contrast...

Seems pretty readable to me. The information density is high, there are slight box shadows in interactive elements. We need more like this.

> this isn't winning any design award

Good. I prefer interfaces that care more about being concise and usable than about winning design awards.

You can be concise and have good contrast. "Winning any awards" is a manner of speech.

Try another theme, looks great I think. Black or dark blue is crisp

I had to scroll all the way down in order for the bottom panel to appear. Then I was able to change theme. Good it has themes, but it just highlighted another problem in the design of the website.

The dark blue theme is indeed neat.

You can always turn it off.