I tracked down where the crash was and have a small fix but it involves building from source....
just comment out this part of talika.c (line 2230) then build and install
[code]
// g_signal_connect (G_OBJECT (applet), "size-request",
// G_CALLBACK (talika_size_request), tasklist);
[/code]
It seems to work fine without these msgs and it stops the crash...