[Matplotlib-users] Problems with sans-serif fonts and tick labels with TeX

Hey folks,

I'm having trouble getting a consistent sans-serif font in my figures:
https://gist.github.com/phobson/5503195 (see attached output)

This is pretty much the same issue as this Stack Overflow post:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12322738/how-do-i-change-the-axis-tick-font-in-a-matplotlib-plot-when-rendering-using-lat

But, the end result I'm looking for is to process the whole figure through
latex and have sans-serif fonts everywhere, even in math text.

The accepted solution on SO is to manually set the font properties of the
ticks for the figure prior to saving.

Is there a configuration-based work around for this? I'd like to avoid
having to pick through everywhere that I call fig.savefig and manually set
tick font properties if possible.

Thanks,
-Paul