I choose phrases based on "text speak" and initials of songs or phrases that I can remember, using upper case, lower case, and numerals. For instance, if I was a Johnny Cash fan, I might use the opening line of San Quentin, San Quentin I hate every inch of you, and render it as "SQi8eiou", producing a seemingly random stream of characters as my password.

On my list of passwords, I could then write it as Mudcat – Cash to remind me what I'd used for this site, without writing the actual password.