How to make only certain catagories appear

Hey, I posted this a few days back but didn’t get a response that fixed this.

I need to make my landing page show only a certain category…
What I figured i have to do is –
1. Make a page template
2. Make a page and apply that template.
3. In settings>Reading, apply that page as “Front Page”

…however, this is not working ??
Here is my code for the page template. Do you see anything wrong?

<?php
/*
Template Name: Blog_t
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<!-- content ................................. -->
<div id="content">

<?php query_posts('category_name=blog&showposts=10'); ?><?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Title, permalink, and content code here

<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php comments_template(); ?>
</div> <!-- /content -->
<?php get_sidebar();?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Thanks in advance!!!
john