I stumbled across this password meter tool and thought it was pretty interesting.

zxcvbn

I've always wondered what makes for a good password beyond the obvious - everyone knows that random gibberish is good (but you can't remember it) and "password", "12345" (unless you're an idiot securing his luggage), and so on are bad, but what about in between? This tool gives you a pretty good way to test some password ideas to see how they look for strength. Just reading through the tests in this tool gives you some good ideas on what to avoid. The above link is a test site for tool. I would recommend messing with it, but do not use one of your actual passwords. General paranoia should be a good guide when handing out your password - that is, don't. That said, if your password is, say, a couple of words with some numbers at the end, try a test that's similar and see what it looks like.

FYI - it looks like this, which isn't so good.

If you want to read about the mechanics of this tool and how much thought went into it, here's a good link to do so. You might even spot some areas that could be improved.

Myself, I'm a big fan of using Lastpass and using it to generate big, nasty, random passwords for me. The (super cheap) premium option of having it on your smartphone is a very nice upgrade, but the free version is great too.