How can I make emacs read the colour and fonts configuration from the .emacs file? I started following the videos recently, so I'm still in the earlier classes, and I'm following fine using notepad++, but all the functions and shortcuts of emacs seem like they'd be really useful and speed up my work. Unfortunately, for some reason emacs won't load the colour configuration from Casey's .emacs file. I searched how to change emacs colour in google, but it says to put exactly what already is in Casey's .emacs.
I'd appreciate any help. The reason I want to change the colours, despite the fact that the rest of Casey's configurations seem to load fine, is that the default emacs highlights the line were I'm typing with a colour nearly identical to that of the font, no allowing me to read at all while I'm typing.
Thanks.