I will look into configurable defaults (for series, axes and scales) over the weekend. Makes no sense to hack in quick solutions as some of us might like the shades or thin lines as default.
The error messages should either appear in the browser console (aka development tools) of the editor page or in your terminal window (console) or logging system depending your OS.
Scales you have to define first in the scales tab, close the config (as described in the known issues) and when you reopen the config panel you can select them for your axes.
Chris
