first pass of review for Mike

mainly style improvements
boilerplate for sphinx docs
sphinx documentation for modules
sphinx configuration
sync sphinx version with python module
switch exception catch-alls to debug logging

we explicitly catch ValueError, pass through any other exceptions,
and do debug logging in the case of a ValueError
small fixes after final review
small fixes to reprs for style
Merge pull request #3 from amontalenti/master

Addition of sphinx API documentation + a slew of stylistic changes