Simple Password Generation
Speaking of Wilco … I often use lines from songs—including Wilco, which is what made me think of it—to help me generate passwords. For an example, I’ll take the first line from the first song on YHF, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart“: “I am an American aquariaum drinker”.
If I needed a password from that, I’d take the first letter in each word of the line:
I a a A a d
Then I’ll alternate the capitalization:
I a A a A d
If necessary, I’ll add some numbers to it. Here, I’d need two numbers for an eight-character alphanumeric password. I might take my present age [26], or any other of a number of things.
Whenever possible, I’ll take the words “to” and “for” and convert them to “2″ and “4″, just like the teenagers do, to make the password harder to guess. If I were being a good Methodist—which I am—I could use the first two lines from the most Methodist of all hymns:
O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise!
I would start with: O f a t t t s m g r p
Then, alternate capitalization: O f A t T t S m G r P
Then, substitute numbers: 0 4 A 1000 T 2 S m G r P. Note that I put in 1000 for the T in “thousand”.
And 04A1000T2SmGrP is going to be pretty hard to guess. [Well, not anymore, because Google now has it. Blast.]
But you get my point.
If, like me, you get lines stuck in your head … use them to your advantage. If you forget a password, all you have to do is sing the line and make it into your password. 
N g 2 l G m L 4 u I a T
Am I good or what?
August 6th, 2005 at 11:55 amRoger, you’re dead to me for that.
Roger is referring, of course, to the song most hardcore Caedmon’s Call fans try to pretend was never recorded: “Never Gonna Let Go“.
I refer to it as “Never Gon—SKIP!” I’ve listened to it twice now, and twice was two times too many.
August 6th, 2005 at 11:59 amAnd either I’m not hardcore, or I defy the mold.
August 6th, 2005 at 12:06 pmWe broke your mold after you came out, Roger. One person loving NGLG is enough!
August 6th, 2005 at 12:08 pmJeff has an applet set up at work that generates 10 random passwords that comply with our password requirements. Anytime we need a new one, we can go generate sets of passwords until we spot one that looks like it might be memorable enough to use.
August 7th, 2005 at 3:00 pm[...] While Geof points out a great way to create hard to guess/easy to remember passwords - you just can’t remember enough unique passwords to have one for every site. [...]
February 5th, 2007 at 1:55 pm