Problems installing (M)ELPA packages

In Problems installing (M)ELPA packages Sebastien wrote:

While using `package.el’ fulfills a long-awaited dream for easily adding and upgrading Emacs libraries, I now feel upgrading packages is much more complex than what I anticipated.
At least two of the packages I use daily (Org and Helm) require to be installed from inside a fresh Emacs session (emacs -Q), where nothing has been loaded.

I had wondered but never found out why one must follow this approach when installing org from scratch. Good to know!

A progress indicator for code blocks in org-mode

A progress indicator for code blocks in org-mode courtesy
of John Kitchin:

;; give us some hint we are running
(defadvice org-babel-execute-src-block (around progress nil activate)
  (set-face-attribute
   'org-block-background nil :background "LightSteelBlue")
  (message "Running your code block")
  ad-do-it
  (set-face-attribute 'org-block-background nil :background "gray")
  (message "Done with code block"))

What all of those org-babel functions do

For the lazy org users like myself who want to know what the functions
listed here do, just evaluate the one you want:

(describe-function 'org-babel-execute-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-open-src-block-result)
(describe-function 'org-babel-load-in-session)
(describe-function 'org-babel-pop-to-session)
(describe-function 'org-babel-previous-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-next-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-execute-maybe)
(describe-function 'org-babel-open-src-block-result)
(describe-function 'org-babel-expand-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-goto-src-block-head)
(describe-function 'org-babel-goto-named-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-goto-named-result)
(describe-function 'org-babel-execute-buffer)
(describe-function 'org-babel-execute-subtree)
(describe-function 'org-babel-demarcate-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-tangle)
(describe-function 'org-babel-tangle-file)
(describe-function 'org-babel-check-src-block)
(describe-function 'org-babel-insert-header-arg)
(describe-function 'org-babel-load-in-session)
(describe-function 'org-babel-lob-ingest)
(describe-function 'org-babel-view-src-block-info)
(describe-function 'org-babel-switch-to-session-with-code)
(describe-function 'org-babel-sha1-hash)
(describe-function 'org-babel-describe-bindings)
(describe-function 'org-babel-do-key-sequence-in-edit-buffer)

There are some very special functions in there!