Last week, my lovely dentist fitted my two custom-made teeth. After all the months of drilling, screwing, photographing, x-raying, and prodding, the last fitting was little more than gluing. I now have two colour-matched gnashers installed in my bonce. And all my brain can do is scream…

ARGH! THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY MOUTH!

The first few weeks of having the teeth removed was weird. My tongue kept prodding the gaps as if it were hoping its friends had magically returned. After getting the healing abutments screwed in, I couldn't stop feeling the metal divots in my mouth. And now I have teeth again, the weirdness has returned.

Logically, I know my lips are constantly being touched by my original teeth. But now they're also being touched by new teeth - and that's all I can fixate on.

When I chew, my teeth grind against each other - as they have done for decades. Only now they're grinding against something which wasn't previously there.

The inside of the new teeth feel unnaturally smooth against my tongue. As though they are artificial constructs unwillingly transplanted to my face.

There are foreign objects in my mouth, protruding horrifically into my lips, attacking my teeth, and ensnaring my tongue. They are pushing against the other teeth in my mouth, crowding them out. I hate hate hate hate it.

I'm not normally someone who complains about sensory issues - and I know I will get used to it in time - but this is intensely uncomfortable.

"Bite marks," said the forensics officer. "A lot of bite marks."

The detective peered at the ragged corpse. It was barely recognisable as human; just a series of holes where flesh ought to be.

"Please tell me a wild animal did this."

The forensics officer pointed at a series of incisions across what was left of a shoulder. "That's a human bite. No doubt about it."

"What kind of sick freak bites chunks out of someone? Do the teeth marks match those from the previous five victims?"

"That's why we called you. They do match, and we know who those teeth belong to."

"We were due to catch a break. Who was it?"

The room went quiet. The assembled forensics team paused. They knew how crazy this would sound.

"The teeth marks... Well... The teeth marks belong to the victim..."

The room span around the detective. This couldn't be suicide. It just couldn't. No human - not even a psychopath burnt out on designer pharmaceuticals - could inflict those sorts of wounds on themselves. It didn't make sense.

The detective struggled to stem the rising vomit, "How sure are you?"

Shakily, a forensics tech picked up a discarded lump of human-meat. The incisions were clearly visible on both sides. She opened the mouth of the victim and started pointing out all the subtle details which proved the match.

"100% sure. Either this is an extreme case of auto-cannibalism or..."

The detective sighed. "Check the victim's social media posts. See if they ever shared a CT scan of their jaw online. My guess is that our killer stole their dental profile and created a weapon using a 3D printer..."

Behind this door is the lair of Dr David Mills.

After seeing my adventures in viewing my CT Scan using Linux, he generously offered to help print them out using the dental lab's resin printer.

Which resulted in this:

Once all the scaffolding was snapped off, I was left with a life-sized replica of my face-bones:

I'm sure nothing bad will happen as a result of this!

Last week - following some dental trauma - I had another scan of my head. The dentist took great delight in showing me my bones in 3D. So I asked for a copy.

This was something he'd never done before! So, together, we navigated the software, found the export button, and generated a copy. Even zipped up it was half a gigabyte - a bit too much for email and, not unreasonably, he didn't want me plugging in strange USB devices to his medical equipment. So he sent it over WeTransfer. Possibly not the most secure method for my medical data, but I didn't really have time to set up a personal SFTP site or teach him about installing WSL so he could SCP the content. Ah well, needs must.

Unzipped, the folder was about 700MB. Of that, 400MB was taken up by the included Windows app "Ez3D-i". Unsurprisingly, it didn't run on Linux.

The other 300MB was taken up by 450 .DCM files. These are medical images in the DICOM format. This is a relatively open standard which uses JPG plus lots of metadata. There are dozens of Linux programs which can read this - although many haven't been updated in years.

The easiest GUI for viewing the images is Mango. It presents a view of the CT Scan that you can move around.

It isn't the most intuitive app in the world, but it is good enough for browsing the scan.

If you want a 3D model of your scan, I recommend Aliza. Again, not the simplest interface:

But once you get the hang of it, you can manipulate the 3D scan and view it from all angles. It's possible to peel away the soft tissue and do all sorts of other fancy trickery. Even on my laptop without a fancy graphics card, it was fast. Here's a quick animation showing the (false colour) version.

If you have had a CT scan, please do ask for a copy of the DICOM files. It is great fun to explore around your own body.

Now I just need to find a way to import this into my Meta Quest so I can enjoy these teeth in VR!

As per the meme:

• I've sat in the seat of a space shuttle.
• I still have two of my baby teeth.
• I used to be a voice-over artist.

Well, one of those truths is about to come crashing down.

When I was younger, I had two of my adult teeth removed. They were coming out at such a crazy angle that they couldn't be tackled with braces. So they were surgically yanked out. I was a teenager at the time and was told that, with care, my remaining baby gnashers would probably last another decade or so - if I remembered to floss.

Three decades on, and I thought the chompers were doing relatively well. Sure, they looked a little worn and stubby - but they had certainly exceeded their manufacturer's guarantee. My lovely dentist had been prodding at them for the last few years with increasing worry. But reassured me they were doing better than expected.

And then, one morning, one of the teeth suffered a catastrophic structural integrity failure.

WARNING Image of dental horror follows!

Aiii! Luckily it didn't hurt - although it did rip into my lip a bit. But it was clear this tooth needed something more drastic than extra-strength Colgate.

The dentist has whittled down the remaining fang to be a bit less stabby. Now I have to decide what I want to happen to the remainder of my tusks.

I've previously wondered about high-tech dental implants - but it looks like there's nothing available. No NFC, light up, Internet-of-Teeth for me!

So I guess I'm going under the gas once again. These old ivories are destined for the scrap-heap. Titanium implants with glow in the dark colour-matched crowns, I guess. I'm not sure I want to travel abroad to get the procedure done. It may be cheaper, but there's less recompense if things go wrong.

If you've have dental implants in the UK, and want to hit me up with strategic info, please use the comment box.

At every dental check-up my dentist prods them, gives them a wiggle, and sometimes takes an x-ray. "Well," they say, "They're fine for now…"

The "for now" is getting closer with every visit. At my last visit, the dentist started to talk to me about "options". It looks like the best thing is implants. A hole is drilled into my jaw (!) and a titanium screw is implanted (!!) then a crown is screwed into that.

But that's pretty boring! A ceramic crown is inert and - frankly - a little dull. But there doesn't seem to be anything else on the market. Here's what I want to see:

• NFC
  • I want my teeth to light up every time I bring my phone to my face - just like those cool LED fingernails!
  • Or, perhaps, just let my teeth carry a few bytes of data? Wouldn't it be cool to have my implants carry my private encryption key?!?
• Materials
  • It looks like my choices are a colour matched ceramic, or a "bling" gold plate. Perhaps with an embossed logo.
  • What about a "Willow Pattern"? Or something which looks like circuit boards? (Probably because no-one wants blue or green teeth!)
• Piezoelectric materials
  • I'm going to be chewing. That can generate electrical power. Probably not enough to charge my phone - but surely something?
  • Would chewing produce enough electricity to power Ultraviolet LEDs to help kill off bacteria in my mouth?

Isn't this a bit silly?

Yes. It's partly me dealing with the fear of needing someone to drill into my face. It's also the annoyance that I'll be paying several thousand pounds for something without an IP address.

If you're a dentist - or working on novel dental treatments - please reach out to me.