Update parameter parsing

[agitter]

Because #13 will most likely not be merged, this creates a separate pull request to incorporate the new parameter parsing.

[agitter]

The Travis CI build fails because the .travis.yml file is incomplete. It does not run anything, which leads to this error:

$ rake
rake aborted!
No Rakefile found (looking for: rakefile, Rakefile, rakefile.rb, Rakefile.rb)
/home/travis/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.1/bin/ruby_executable_hooks:15:in `eval'
/home/travis/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.1/bin/ruby_executable_hooks:15:in `<main>'
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

We can merge this as is because #16 will overwrite the .travis.yml file once we merge that.