I downloaded 1.5.3 because it fixed the category bug, then found I could no longer set the number of recent posts displayed. I tracked it down to the following query in include.php:
$posts = query_posts( array(
'suppress_fun' => true,
'post_type' => $post_types,
'numberposts' => $numberposts,
'cat' => trim( $cats, ',' )
));
I changed it to:
$posts = get_posts( array(
'post_type' => $post_types,
'numberposts' => $numberposts,
'cat' => trim( $cats, ',' )
));
I have no idea what ‘suppress_fun’ was or why it broke the query, but there you go. I hope this helps others.
–Marshall