preferences causes crash

[norman <norman littletank org>]

I am relatively new to F-Spot and have it installed on a desktop running
Ubuntu 8.10. Everything I have tried, so far, works well. However, when
I select Preferences, the application crashes. I ran F-Spot in a
terminal, then Edit -> Preferences with the following result:- 

norman gruber:~$ f-spot
[Info  11:04:40.660] Initializing DBus
[Info  11:04:40.958] Initializing Mono.Addins
[Info  11:04:41.384] Starting new FSpot server
[Info  11:04:44.056] Starting BeagleService
[Info  11:04:44.056] Hack for gnome-settings-daemon engaged

(f-spot:2654): GdkPixbuf-WARNING **: GdkPixbufLoader finalized without
calling gdk_pixbuf_loader_close() - this is not allowed. You must
explicitly end the data stream to the loader before dropping the last
reference.
Exception in Gtk# callback delegate
  Note: Applications can use GLib.ExceptionManager.UnhandledException to
handle the exception.
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance
of an object
  at FSpot.UI.Dialog.PreferenceDialog.LoadPreference (System.String key)
[0x00000] 
  at FSpot.UI.Dialog.PreferenceDialog..ctor () [0x00000] 
  at FSpot.UI.Dialog.PreferenceDialog.Show () [0x00000] 
  at MainWindow.HandlePreferences (System.Object sender,
System.EventArgs args) [0x00000] 
  at GLib.Signal.voidObjectCallback (IntPtr handle, IntPtr data)
[0x00000] 
   at GLib.ExceptionManager.RaiseUnhandledException(System.Exception e,
Boolean is_terminal)
   at GLib.Signal.voidObjectCallback(IntPtr handle, IntPtr data)
   at GLib.Signal.voidObjectCallback(IntPtr , IntPtr )
   at Gtk.Application.gtk_main()
   at Gtk.Application.gtk_main()
   at Gtk.Application.Run()
   at Gnome.Program.Run()
   at FSpot.Driver.Main(System.String[] args)
norman gruber:~$ 

I have tried Google and although I note others have had the problem I
could not find an answer. Could someone please suggest what I need to do
to overcome the problem.

Norman