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Viktor Drozd (1955 – 2007, softography) Andrey Drozd My father, Viktor Drozd, was born 8th of july 1955 near the city of Minsk (Belarus). He worked as chief engineer in the road projection department. Our first Spectrum computer was bought in 1992 (for my birthday). He shared his interest with me, as we searched for POKEs and drew maps... I moved to PC gaming, but my father never left the Spectrum scene, as emulators presented him with new possibilities. He was an unusual man - his hobby was more than just that a word. Imagine that every day after work, he spent several hours with his spectrum deeds, sometimes even in the early morning before work, and on the weekends from dawn till dusk. He was not just a casual fan - he was a true spectrumist, and a very good father, grandpa and husband. The one, who truly was a Man with a capital letter. We'll miss him until the end of our lives. Martijn van der Heide I first got in touch with Viktor in 2003, when he inquired about the lack of Eastern European entries in the database. Ever since, he made a point of working on this omission diligently, starting off with making sure each and every existing "TR-DOS" entry had completely accurate details, up to country of release, control options and screenshots. He would produce these (big!) updates in between his many other contributions to the scene, such as POKEs and maps. What makes his work so valuable is the great eye for perfection he had. Every last little detail was carefully researched until he was absolutely certain it was correct, before presenting it to us. And when we added new fields to the database (such as tie-in licences), he would revisit all entries he had already covered, to make sure those had the new fields properly filled in too. After completing accuracy of the TR-DOS section, he set his mind on expanding it to include every remaining title from Eastern Europe to the WoS database, with his usual detail levels. Sadly, he departed before he was able to really get this going. I will really miss Viktor a lot. He was witty and ever helpful, in any way he possibly could. Gerard Sweeney Viktor was an invaluable contribution to The Tipshop. It seemed that every month saw at least one email from him containing a ton of new maps, cheats, POKEs or hints... And usually at least a few corrections or improvements on existing material. To describe him as passionate about the Spectrum scene would be an understatement. Whenever I get sent new tips for a game, I'll do my very best to verify them... With Viktor, I never had to. About the best way I can visually show how much Viktor gave to The Tipshop is via this link, which shows every single tip he sent in - all 1153 of them! He will be sadly missed. Acknowledgements: Andrey Drozd, Martijn van der Heide and Gerard Sweeney for the write-up.