How do I paint a basement ceiling and heating pipes?
Painting a ceiling is not that much different from painting any other surface.  Take a look at the other questions in the painting tag here for lots of good tips.  Definitely invest in an extension pole for your roller handle so that you're not holding your arm over your head for the entire time, and enough drop cloths to cover the ground in the area you're painting.

If you have bare copper heating pipes, you might want to think about wrapping them in insulation and painting that.  I've got some of the regular pipe-wrap insulation in my house that the previous owner got paint on and it doesn't look any the worse for wear; I think it was regular latex paint, either gloss or semi-gloss.  You can also get wraps that are specifically marked as paintable.