Excluding post categories from main posts

Hi

I was wondering if anyone could help me.

I’ve created a new category on my site and I want to display the posts within a widget instead of with my main reviews. Its going to act as an editorial comments bar, commenting on other news and blogs, with editorial control. I don’t know if I’m approaching it quite the right way, but want to experiment with it this way, as I want it still to ping to twitter and facebook. The site is https://www.jadedeye.com

Anyway I’m using the Equilibrium theme and the query code that it uses is as follows:

<?php query_posts(‘cat=ID&showposts=2’); ?>

What do I need to write in to exclude a category?

There is also the following codes in two other separate areas and have a feeling that I’m going to have to edit these too?

<?php query_posts(‘cat=ID&showposts=1&offset=2’); ?>

and

<?php query_posts(‘cat=-ID&showposts=8&offset=3’); ?>

Thanks
J-P