The statistics on user password choices over at Coding Horror are pretty scary. Coming up with a password that's easy to remember, yet hard for another person (or bot) to guess (or attack) is actually pretty tricky. I'm a fairly flakey person and I had a really difficult time coming up with good passwords until the sysadmins at the University of Minnesota taught me their trick.
Just think of a phrase that means something to you and use the first letters of that phrase for your password.
For me I've found it's easiest to use a lyrical phrase, maybe one that relates to the website or machine I'm logging into. For example, I might use lyrics from the Beatle's "Lovely Rita" for my student loan account (for some reason loans feel "metered" to me).
"Give us a wink and make me think of you" could be: gua*ammth0y
The "*" is a wink and there's a zero instead of an "o". Pretty easy for me to remember, but not terribly easy to guess.
Hmm... maybe ";" makes a better wink than "*", which is more of a kiss, but it doesn't really matter. The more it makes sense to you and nobody else, the better ;)
Need a song to get started?