how to display WP content outside of WP

i have wordpress set up here:
mywebsite.com/blog/

i would also like to display the heading and date of each article on my site’s homepage.
mywebsite.com/
this is outside of the WP folders and if i try to use code from the existing templates the functions stop working.

with 1.2 i could hack the code to get this info to display on the homepage but with 1.5 this does not seem possible. ??

i know that 1.5 has the nice feature of being able to create stand along pages but AFAIK they can only “stand alone” within the directory WP is intalled in.

any help is appreciated.