An actor should be able to send a message to self in the constructor. At the moment it throws an exception on actor creation.

scala> import akka.actor._
import akka.actor._

scala> class Test extends Actor {
    | self ! "hi"
    | def receive = { case m => println(m) }
    | }
defined class Test

scala> val actor = Actor.actorOf[Test]
[INFO] [09/15/2011 03:16:43.771] [Thread-7] [EventHandler$] Starting up EventHandler
[INFO] [09/15/2011 03:16:43.772] [Thread-7] [LocalDeployer$] Deploying actors locally [
	
]
akka.actor.ActorInitializationException: Actor has not been started, you need to invoke 'actor' before using it
[haiku.local_5fb169e0-df38-11e0-bff1-c8bcc8ee0339]
	at akka.actor.LocalActorRef.postMessageToMailbox(ActorRef.scala:728)
	at akka.actor.ScalaActorRef$class.$bang(ActorRef.scala:1133)
	at akka.actor.LocalActorRef.$bang(ActorRef.scala:491)
	at Test.<init>(<console>:11)