Kicking the tires on 0.8.1...tires kicking back

I am trying to convert a few projects to the latest kafka...
Is this the latest artifact?
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.kafka</groupId>
<artifactId>kafka-perf_2.8.0</artifactId>
<version>0.8.1</version>
</dependency>

I have a piece of code

@Test
public void test() throws InterruptedException {
//super.createTopic("mytopic", 1, 1);
KafkaWriter kw = new
KafkaWriter(super.createProducerConfig().props().props()
, "mytopic"
, new DefaultMessagePartitioner());
kw.init();
for (int i =0 ;i< 1000 ; i++){
System.out.println("sending");
kw.send(("bla "+i+" yyy zzz").getBytes());

System.out.println("done");
ConsumerConnector consumerConnector =
Consumer.createJavaConsumerConnector(super.createConsumerConfig());

Map<String, Integer> consumers = new HashMap<String, Integer>();
consumers.put("mytopic", 1);
Map<String, List<KafkaStream<byte[], byte []>>> topicMessageStreams =
consumerConnector
.createMessageStreams(consumers);

final List<KafkaStream<byte[], byte[]>> streams =
topicMessageStreams.get("mytopic");
final AtomicInteger in = new AtomicInteger();
final KafkaStream<byte[], byte[]> stream = streams.get(0);

Thread t = new Thread() {
public void run() {
ConsumerIterator<byte[], byte[]> it = stream.iterator();
while (it.hasNext()){
System.out.println("waiting for messages");
MessageAndMetadata<byte[], byte[]> m = it.next();
System.out.println("key " + new String(m.key()));
System.out.println("message " + new String(m.message()));
in.incrementAndGet();
System.out.println("count " + in.get());
if (in.get() == 999) {
break;

};

t.start();
t.join();

protected static kafka.producer.ProducerConfig createProducerConfig(){
Properties producerProps = new Properties();
//producerProps.put("serializer.class",
"kafka.serializer.StringEncoder");
putZkConnect(producerProps, "localhost:"+zookeeperTestServer.getPort());
producerProps.setProperty("batch.size", "10");
producerProps.setProperty("producer.type", "async");
producerProps.put("metadata.broker.list", "localhost:9092");
return new kafka.producer.ProducerConfig(producerProps);

protected ConsumerConfig createConsumerConfig(){
Properties consumerProps = new Properties();
putZkConnect(consumerProps, "localhost:"+zookeeperTestServer.getPort());
putGroupId(consumerProps, "group1");
consumerProps.put("auto.offset.reset", "smallest");
ConsumerConfig consumerConfig = new ConsumerConfig(consumerProps);
return consumerConfig;

The first 200 messages I send seem to get lost in the ether.

I have also tried creating the topic myself.

public static void createTopic(String name, int replica , int partitions
){
ZkClient z = new ZkClient("localhost:"+zookeeperTestServer.getPort());
Properties p = new Properties();
AdminUtils.createTopic(z, name, replica, partitions, p);

Which complains when i try to write to the topic.

014-03-30 12:28:35 WARN BrokerPartitionInfo:83 - Error while fetching
metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic mytopic ->
No partition metadata for topic mytopic due to
kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [mytopic]: class
kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException
2014-03-30 12:28:35 WARN BrokerPartitionInfo:83 - Error while fetching
metadata [{TopicMetadata for topic mytopic ->
No partition metadata for topic mytopic due to
kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException}] for topic [mytopic]: class
kafka.common.LeaderNotAvailableException
2014-03-30 12:28:35 ERROR DefaultEventHandler:97 - Failed to collate
messages by topic, partition due to: Failed to fetch topic metadata for
topic: mytopic

Does anyone know what is going on. I went through these pains converting to
0.8.0-betas and I was hoping to be done dealing with this :)