This is my Emacs setup, inspired by Sacha Chua's .emacs.
I have a very minimal .emacs file, which loads some minimal requirements and then runs the bew_config.org file, which is a set of Emacs configurations written in a literate programming style. Org-babel turns the org file into an elisp file and runs it.
I try to maintain a very small custom.el (bew_custom.el) so I know where all the settings are in my bew_config.org.